Field data of vehicles are used not only for product optimization, but in part also show much potential in the area of the Internet of things. Data are detected in vehicles via sensors or as software variables and are usually stored in control units in the vehicle in order then to read them out via diagnostic or other communication interfaces for processing. The available data volume is limited in this context by a storage space in the control unit (abbreviated: ECU) and by an available transmission volume, e.g. of an ESP system. In contrast to consumer hardware, storage space is here still comparatively expensive. It is an ongoing optimization problem to prune the available information sufficiently in order to conserve storage space, and yet to keep the relevant information as much as possible.